Now this looks like fun. A company in New York is offering walking tours of some of New York’s finest chocolatiers.
They currently have two tours, a “Luxury Tour” and a “New Cuisine Tour”. The tours last around 2 hours and cost $70. Chocolate included.
Sounds like a great way to discover new chocolates and work off a few calories with all that walking too.
Any Chocablog readers want to give it a try and write us a report?
We might be anticipating the return of Cadbury Wispa at the moment, but it’s only fair we take a look at it’s older, slightly less fashionable cousin, Aero.
Like Wispa, Aero is simply chocolate with bubbles in it. But the bubbles in Aero are much bigger than those in Wispa, which gives it more of a crumbly than a velvety texture.
As if to emphasise its lack of fashion sense, Aero (at least here in the UK) comes in an old-skool foil wrapper with a paper sleeve. I think I actually prefer this to the cheap plastic wrappers most chocolate bars come in, but maybe that’s just because I’m getting old.
Upon unwrapping, you’re greeted by a fairly thick bar of chocolate divided into “chunks”, each stamped with the Aero logo. Unfortunately, if you try to break the bar along these chunks, it’s likely to crumble and send small pieces of chocolate flying into the eyes of anyone in the room. At least that’s what happened to mine. Admittedly, it had been stored in the fridge, but even so, if they’re going to divide it into chunks, they should at least be ones that allow you to break the bar into pieces without injuring small children.
The taste is… well… typical Nestlé chocolate. In other words, it’s very average. Sometimes I wonder why Nestlé don’t just change their name to “The Decidedly Average Chocolate Company” and be done with it. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly nothing special. I’d personally rank Cadbury and even Mars chocolate above this.
And the bubbles just don’t quite do it for me either. They add a bit of texture and make the bar quite light, but they just don’t taste “bubbly”.
I know there are some people that love Aero, and even I used to buy them regularly back in the 80s. But even then, I think it was more a case of being impressed with the fact that they could put bubbles inside chocolate, rather than actually liking it.
Having said all that, you can bet that if Aero was discontinued, the campaign to bring it back would be even bigger than the Wispa campaign. I think it’s just one of those bars you need to see on the shelf on the sweet shop to let you know the world hasn’t ended just yet.
It’s not really for me, but I think a small part of me would die if it wasn’t there, waiting for me to… er… not buy it.
Finally, here’s a selection of Aero ads from around the world that I found on YouTube, starting with my personal favourite (it was filmed at East Finchley – my local Tube station):
More Ads
Here’s an interesting little “recipe” for a “negative calorie” chocolate cake from Steamy Kitchen.
I use “recipe” in quotes because it involves a pre-packaged cake mix and “negative calorie” in quotes because I can’t help thinking her calorie counting technique has gone awry somehow. I think perhaps she may be in need of a chocolate calculator…
Still, if it tastes half as good as it looks, it’s got to be worth a try!
[Link]
Yes, that really is a calculator. Made of chocolate.
A company going by the name of 5.5 Design made this, although I’m not entirely sure why. But it did get me thinking it’d be kind of cool if Hotel Chocolat actually made chocolate hotels…
[Via Engadget]